Multi-million dollar blitz starts to help at risk kids

AN EXTRA 12 frontline and support child safety workers will begin work in Toowoomba by March next year, as part of a continued push to improve the child protection system and keep Queensland children safe.

Child Safety Minister Shannon Fentiman said the Palaszczuk Government is investing a further $7.8 million annually to hire 82 new permanent child safety workers across the state to bring down caseloads and to keep Queensland children safe.

"This includes six child safety officers, a child safety support officer, team leader and front line support administrative officer for the Toowoomba South Child Safety Service Centre," she said.

"While the Toowoomba North Child Safety Service Centre will receive a child safety officer, one full-time child safety support officer and a part-time child safety support officer.

"Our child safety staff are dedicated and hard-working people and the work they are doing is increasingly complex. Staff are working more intensively with families and that work is taking longer.

"We are committed to restoring confidence in this system and to ensuring that all service centres across the state have the resources and the staff needed to keep children safe.

"These additional staff will assist existing child safety workers to provide more timely responses to notifications of at risk children and support care teams to case manage children on child protection orders.

"They include front line child safety officers, support officers, team leaders and administrative officers who will help to keep vulnerable children in Queensland safe and support families who are in crisis."

These staff are in addition to the 166 employed by Child Safety Services over the last two years and on top of the 47 extra staff allocated in the 2016-17 Budget and to be employed by the end of the year across the state.

Ms Fentiman said the 82 additional positions will cost $5.275m in 2016-17 and $7.875 million in 2017-18, and included:

48 Front Line Child Safety Officers

20 Front Line Child Safety Support Officers

7 Front Line Senior Team Leaders

7 Front Line Support Administrative Officers

The new staff come as Ms Fentiman yesterday released the latest child safety performance data to June 30, 2016, which shows some early signs of improvement but that more needs to be done to keep children safe.

"The latest June data shows more than 90 per cent of notifications in 2015-16 had an investigation commenced. This is a significant improvement on the March quarter data, which was at 85.2 per cent, and reflects the work done since last year to address investigation and assessment timeframes," Ms Fentiman said.

"However, commencement timeframes are still not where they need to be. The overall proportion of investigations and assessments that started within the response timeframe was 35 per cent. This is not good enough.

"That's why we have invested in an additional 129 frontline and frontline support child safety workers since June to bring down caseloads from an average of 19 to 17, and to keep Queensland children safe.

"These new staff will be further supported by the rollout of specialist investigation teams, which are commencing work to drive better response times and enable frontline child safety staff to spend more time with vulnerable families."